We totally snubbed Astral Castle, the new album from Mechanical River, from our top 10 albums of 2012 list. Why did we do that? I don’t have an answer to that question, it just happened when we averaged all of our lists together.
2012 was a great year for songs from SC traveling far and wide, most notable being “Birmingham” by Shovels and Rope. But another tickled our ears in a very special way, and that was “Pomelos” by Mechanical River.
In 2012 “Pomelos” was featured in an episode of Gossip Girl. It was the first song featured on their Daytrotter session, which was rated as the top 100 Daytrotter sessions of the year. Streaming the song over the internet is all good, it’s whimsical and irresistibly catchy, but seeing it performed live is a real treat. Joel Hamilton makes magic with his microphone baseball helmet, casio keyboard, tamboshoe, cigar box guitar, ironing board utility stand and background lighting. He’ll have us all taking showers with the lights off pretending we’re in a waterfall.
